Change Browser Bookmark Images

nights0223 · 07/16/2009, 03:24 PM

I liked how the default browser bookmarks just had an image of the website logo, for a clean and elegant look. I thought it would be neat if I could make all of my bookmarks look like that, instead of the ugly screenshot of the page. I started looking around, and found that they are located here:

/var/luna/data/browser/icons

They are named thumbnail-xxx.png. I simply opened each of the images in photoshop, and edited them to fit my needs. Make sure when you save them they are named the same thing.

There are also files for the smaller icons, but I only felt like dealing with the main thumbnail for now. Just thought I would share in case anyone else wants to know how to do this.

bdubbx · 07/16/2009, 04:49 PM

This is great! But I have a real noob question on it...how the heck do you do it?

I've rooted my pre, and I've made changes in root (Email Landscape Mod-LOVE IT!), but all I did was copy some codes in key areas, so I don't really understand some things...

I'm sorry for this but here's what I really don't get:
*when you give the path "/var/luna/data/browser/icons", are you in putty or are you using a normal Windows folder to be able to see the actual .png?
*how did you "open" the .png from the path listed? (if in a windows folder, nvm)
*how did you "save" the .png after editing (meaning, how did you get it to override the one in the path)?

I've done MANY searches, read through a lot of posts, and I spend lots of time on the wiki...but I can't seem to find anything that takes me through these basics. I really don't have much luck with searching on the wiki either.

If answering my questions is too much, can someone direct me to a spot/site that details all this out? I usually catch on to this stuff pretty fast...but I'm having a hard time understanding what I'm doing, and I'm getting tired of just copying code...

Thanks to anyone willing to help me out.

gmanvbva · 07/16/2009, 05:16 PM

You can not see those folders using USB Drive in Windows.

You must access via root (or similar means).

This site has just about everything you would need to get started.
pre dev wiki: Welcome to the Pre/webOS Development Wiki

nights0223 · 07/16/2009, 05:27 PM

There are a few ways you could achieve this. The way I am doing it is through winSCP, but you will need to set up SFTP access first. There's a good walkthrough on the pre dev wiki. Just seach for it (can't post links yet, sorry). Then you can access your Pre just like a regular FTP client, you can browse the folders and open the images by right-clicking and selecting 'open'.

This you want want to do it that way, the other option is to SSH in (through puTTY, etc.) and copy the files located /var/luna/data/browser/icons to your internal storage. The path to that is /media/internal, which is the root folder you will see when you connect your Pre as a USB drive.

So, for example, if I wanted to get an image from /var/luna/data/browser/icons and put it on the 'USB Drive', I would type as root:

Code:

cp /var/luna/data/browser/icons/image.png /media/internal

When you plug your Pre in as a USB Drive, the image will be right there. Then to copy it back, it would be the opposite.

Code:

cp /media/internal/image.png /var/luna/data/browser/icons/

I hope this makes sense, and I haven't been too confusing.

gmanvbva · 07/16/2009, 05:30 PM

nights0223,

Any idea on how to increase the bookmark counts?
I created a thread but wasn't sure if you may have run across this already.

nights0223 · 07/16/2009, 05:33 PM

I haven't seen anything yet, I'll dig around and let you know if I find anything.

mokei · 07/16/2009, 05:40 PM

Any idea how to set a bookmark icon in the launcher? It also defaults to a screen shot. I would love to clean these up. This is a little different that storing the bookmark in the browser app, but maybe the images are in the same directory? I did a quick find and grep'ed on the name of a bookmark in launcher and only found the png for the browser app.

gmanvbva · 07/16/2009, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mokei

Any idea how to set the bookmark icon in the launcher?

It's not using the same image?

nights0223 · 07/16/2009, 05:57 PM

It will make 3 images, iirc. One for the thumbnail, one for the bookmark settings area, and one for the launcher. You will have to edit the launcher icon separately. It should be in the same folder.

bdubbx · 07/18/2009, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nights0223

There are a few ways you could achieve this. The way I am doing it is through winSCP, but you will need to set up SFTP access first. There's a good walkthrough on the pre dev wiki. Just seach for it (can't post links yet, sorry). Then you can access your Pre just like a regular FTP client, you can browse the folders and open the images by right-clicking and selecting 'open'.

This you want want to do it that way, the other option is to SSH in (through puTTY, etc.) and copy the files located /var/luna/data/browser/icons to your internal storage. The path to that is /media/internal, which is the root folder you will see when you connect your Pre as a USB drive.

So, for example, if I wanted to get an image from /var/luna/data/browser/icons and put it on the 'USB Drive', I would type as root:

Code:

cp /var/luna/data/browser/icons/image.png /media/internal

When you plug your Pre in as a USB Drive, the image will be right there. Then to copy it back, it would be the opposite.

Code:

cp /media/internal/image.png /var/luna/data/browser/icons/

I hope this makes sense, and I haven't been too confusing.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up! This is EXACTLY what I needed. I'm in the process of setting up the SFTP since I think it will make my life easier when it comes to making modifications such as this. The steps you wrote regarding the SSH way really helps as well since it was what I was not understanding.

bdubbx · 07/20/2009, 03:08 AM

Hey night0223, I got this done and it worked...but only for a little wjile. I only changed 2 of the pngs, and 1 of them reverted back to what it was originally yesterday, and today the other is now what it was orginallt too. Any ideas onwhat is goin on?

Ricyteach · 07/21/2009, 06:25 AM

bdub, the browser preview panes update each time you visit a web page. So if you edit it, it looks like it is reverting back to the "old one" because the page you are visiting hasn't changed a lot. if you look closely you'll see that the image actually is different each time you visit the page.

which is kind of neat i guess, but i'd rather be able to decide what image makes the preview.

i'm sure there is a way to make an image permanent (since the pre-loaded bookmark images in the browser do not change), but i don't know how.

however, if you make an app shortcut instead of a bookmark in the browser, the icons stay the same forever. i added a page to the app launcher for a bunch of bookmarks i use all the time and made app shortcuts for them with some very nice images. this has satisfied me for the time being.

i'd like to know how to "turn off" the updating image feature for bookmarks though.

MLJones8 · 07/21/2009, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ricyteach

i'd like to know how to "turn off" the updating image feature for bookmarks though.

This sounds necessary before doing this modification...

nights0223 · 07/21/2009, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MLJones8

This sounds necessary before doing this modification...

Yeah, it definitely is. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the browser updated the thumbnails, so this will be worthless until we can either find a way to turn the updating off, or figure out how to get them to act like the default ones do. I will look in to it when I get some more time.

Joesmith_fromchat · 07/28/2009, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nights0223

Yeah, it definitely is. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the browser updated the thumbnails, so this will be worthless until we can either find a way to turn the updating off, or figure out how to get them to act like the default ones do. I will look in to it when I get some more time.

Has anyone made any progress on figuring out how the default bookmarks save the image state, I noticed that the image doesn't show up when you look at the bookmarks, all the others do except the default.

Where exactly are the bookmarks stored?

Ricyteach · 07/29/2009, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joesmith_fromchat

Has anyone made any progress on figuring out how the default bookmarks save the image state, I noticed that the image doesn't show up when you look at the bookmarks, all the others do except the default.

Where exactly are the bookmarks stored?

i haven't made any progress on changing the bookmark behavior as of yet.

as far as where they're stored, according to this:

http://forums.precentral.net/web-os-...rk-images.html

bookmarks are in /var/luna/data/browser/icons

i recommend copying the whole directory over so you can look at thumbnails and find the one you want to change, then makes backups, and copy the changed files and backups back over.

Joesmith_fromchat · 07/30/2009, 04:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ricyteach

i haven't made any progress on changing the bookmark behavior as of yet.

as far as where they're stored, according to this:

http://forums.precentral.net/web-os-...rk-images.html

bookmarks are in /var/luna/data/browser/icons

i recommend copying the whole directory over so you can look at thumbnails and find the one you want to change, then makes backups, and copy the changed files and backups back over.

I know where the images are stored for the bookmarks added by the user, I meant where are the url for the bookmarks stored, or what file tells them to fetch the url, I am guessing it also tells it where to fetch the .png and how to handle the updating of the .png's thats the file that needs to be changed to reflect the settings for default bookmarks. If facebook can stay constant so can our bookmarks.

shaft17 · 10/17/2009, 04:11 PM

any new efforts in this topic? i'm also interested in...

simula67 · 11/10/2009, 02:31 PM

Hey all, didn't know if this topic was still active but I found this page which explains how to prevent WebOS from updating the bookmark images. Basically, there is a built-in SQL database for the bookmarks. Each bookmark row in the database has a column which signifies if it is a "built-in" or user-added bookmark. If you update that column value to 1 for each of your bookmarks, the Pre will not update the image. I haven't tried this yet, so no guarantees. Enjoy.

h t t p://czarism.com/change-palmpre-webos-browser-page-icons-in-va

Ricyteach · 11/11/2009, 04:20 AM

FINALLY! I hadn't looked for an answer to this topic in a while and wondered if someone had found a solution yet. Thank you so much simula67!

Someone smarter than me should write a pitch that adds an option to change this "update screen shot each page load" value when the bookmark is created, and also in the edit bookmark dialogue. Seems like an easy enough thing to do- maybe it could be added to the browser multi-patch.